Twitter is my living room, Facebook my kitchen – how I use different social networks

I don’t remember exactly when I signed up for Twitter (my user number is 1756621 so at least it was back when Twitter had fewer than 2 million users) but I didn’t start to use it until earlier this year. Before that I got my microblogging needs satisfied by Jaiku, which Google later murdered made open source.

After having been through a couple of social networks, this time I wanted to try something different, so I set up two accounts. The idea was to have one for English speaking friends and one for Swedish speaking, to prevent pollution of the twitter feed and make a crude social segmentation.

After a couple of weeks it became apparent that this strategy didn’t work. I also noticed a change in my own tweets and the type of things I posted, as the number of followers started to grow.

The thing is, when you have 10 close friends as followers, you can post pretty much everything. They don’t mind. In fact, hearing about your indecision about what to put on your morning sandwich can make their day. It’s, after all, your friends. That’s what friends do: share everyday obstacles and stories.

The problem is: this sharing doesn’t scale well. It’s cute to hear 10 of your closest friends talk about their cats. It’s annoying when 400 people do it.

I also realised that Twitter and Jaiku are two very different services despite their apparent similarities. On Jaiku you often end up with long discussion threads such as this. They had depth. Twitter is short, fast, concise and to the point. It’s little fragments of insights, ideas, link tips and yes, one or two cat posts.

So, instead of having more than one Twitter account, I’ve decided to do the segmentation on the social network level. Right now I mainly use three networks and each network is sort of like a room in a house.

The kitchen: Facebook is my friends “people-I-have-dinner-with” list. On Facebook I’m a little bit more relaxed and post silly stuff like this:
A rule of thumb is that everyone I friend on Facebook is someone I’ve met in person. Facebook is my private web feed.

The work place: LinkedIn is where I keep my professional contacts. Rule of thumb: people I’ve worked with or may work with in the future. More professional, a little stricter. Kind of my online resume.

The living room: Twitter is my general news feed and online conversation. I’m not even sure it’s a social network at all. It’s more of a discovery engine. It has replaced, or rather complemented, my RSS reader. Twitter is my public web feed.

Of course there are many overlaps between these networks and I’m sure my usage of these and other services will change over time (I wonder how Twitter will be used in the not too distant future when everyone from your fridge to your grandmother has a twitter stream) but right now this is how I live on the net.

These three rooms represents different parts of my personality and my life and I’m sure that division will not change, no matter what the Next Big Thing on the net is.

How do you use social networks? I know it’s common to post everything to everywhere, so am I wrong in dividing myself into different personas? What do you think? I’d love to know!

There’s also another dimension to all of this: the emotional bandwidth of the technology used. But that will be another post.

Great points here – and that’s roughly how I separate these social media sites too. But I am not as strict as you regarding Facebook friends – I am also friends with friends of friends even if I haven’t met them, introduce myself to people I have some connection with and make friends with strangers. Since I run a small resort in Thailand I guess my Facebook is more like the cafe at the resort than my living room so it invites conversation between people who’ve just met each other… But it is definitely chattier, more personal and funnier than Twitter…given the sense of humour of Kiwi friends 🙂

Facebook gets updated less frequently, maybe once or twice a week and Twitter much more often.

It is annoying that some people are now using the same update for the Facebook and Twitter feed and wonder if I should defriend them?

Thanks for the comments!
I think we’re all starting to learn how to use this new technology and we’re not at all using it the same way. Kind of interesting because it’s of course a social thing whether or not you accept someones friend request. Is it rude not to? Depends on if I view the social network as my kitchen or my living room or my bedroom or whatever.

I also use these three networks in those three ways, but there´s a fourth one – FriendFeed – that is something in between… First I wanted it to be very private, like my Facebook account, and it started out that way, but suddenly people from Twitter or totally strangers started to connect to my FriendFeed (I don´t know why) and now, FriendFeed seems to be a little like a crowded hallway that I can´t control…
Maybe that will change now since Facebook bought FriendFeed.

I’m with you on this one: I use Facebook for more private contacts (although the words private and the Net don’t really go together!); Twitter is more for business and networking and I hook up with professionals on LinkedIn, although this is my least favourite network.

I also find Xing quite useful here in Stockholm as there’s an active meet-up culture which is very useful.

Don’t forget your blog, too! That’s social media, isn’t it, and a great hub for conversations that you start off.